Across from me, on the narrow shore, the horse climbed from the water and shook Herself, then turned to me. She flicked Her tail and cantered around to the farside of the rock island.
Soon, my kicking feet brushed the pebbly offshore mix and I swam a few more strokes, then stood.
Muck between my toes wasn’t any more preferable on this side of the shore than on the other. I wrung out my hair and hurried along the shore the way the horse had gone. At the far end the stone jutted out into the sea. Hoof marks in the sand and pebbles became human footprints and entered a crevice in the stone. A doorway.
I approached the crevice and entered a cavern through it. Dim inner light showed the single pathway immediately split into three, each ending at the opening to a tunnel.
The crevice I had entered abruptly disappeared. Darkness surrounded me. It would not have been the way out anyway, it was the way deeper in. Deep enough to see my soul.
For a long minute, I stood, paralyzed. I hadn’t checked to see if there were damp footprints leading to any of the tunnels.
The dark closed in on me, suffocating me like obscurity and insignificance.
Cleansing breath in, doubt out.
Which way felt right?
Johnny still held my right hand, physically and outside of this meditation. And the right-hand path seemed to smell of cedar and sage. To the left, my senses found it cinnamon-and-coppery sweet, like blood. Menessos. So the center path . . . that must be my darkness.
My breath caught. At the Witches’ Ball, before I told the lucusi I was the Lustrata, I had a vision of Hecate. She had said, “You will find Me in the darkness. In your darkness. I am there. When you are ready to see your own soul . . . I’ll be waiting.”
As my fingers scrubbed along the chilled, damp wall, my toes slid cautiously forward. My progress was slow, but certain. A dozen paces in, my heart leaped as I felt no floor before me. Crouching to inspect, I felt nothing.
My first thought was to go back. But I knew that I could not choose between Menessos and Johnny. This was ridiculous. My path was not a dead end. Was not a path into darkness that led to a bottomless pit. It couldn’t be. I was the Lustrata. I was the bringer of light and justice. Light. Lustrata implied luster, a glowing sheen.
The mantle!
Calling my armor, calling on the light, that gentle gleam brightened the area around me. Little by little, a vast cavern appeared, a place giants—Titans—had carved into the foundation of the earth. I stood atop a grand stairway, each step five-feet high and thirty feet wide. Pillars stood like skyscrapers across the endless hall before me.
Crouching on the edge, I leaped down, step after step, and counted thirteen in all.
I lingered on the last. Stalactites dotted the ceiling between the enormous pillars, and their companion stalagmites disrupted the floor below. I searched to define a path. Feeling rather like a mouse in the Titan’s house, and wary that there might be a giant cat waiting to pounce, I peered into the distance before easing down.
My feet did not scrape over more stone, but struck wood.
I dropped to the ground. Here, at the foot of the giant stone stairway, was a wide arched door that looked like a cartoon mouse might live behind it—if the mouse were tall as a human. Have to be careful what you’re thinking in here.
The vast hall was an expanse of rock except for a single human-sized door. That made for an easy decision of what to do next.
I pushed the knobless door and it gave with a groan. As I passed through, I emerged into the night. This wasn’t the lake area. I stood on solid, dry earth topped with fall’s dry grass brittle under my feet. The door was attached to a giant—no, I’ll use that word sparingly now—a mature elm tree. It stretched up like a black silhouette, leaves unnaturally still.
As I brought my focus down from the limbs, I checked the sky for a clue to my location. The night was moonless. None of the constellations were ones I could name. The sky didn’t help me at all.
Then the aroma of raisin and currant cakes filled my nostrils. A dirt road stretched before me. I stepped onto the path. Perhaps a dozen yards ahead, two more roads joined it. One on either side. In the center where the three roads intersected, stood an old woman robed in black, face hidden in the depths of a hood. She grasped the handles protruding from the curved shaft of a scythe. The blade’s tip rested on the dirt. Hecate of the Crossroads.
“You have come,” she said in the voice of Time Eternal, the voice of the Depths of Nothing and Everything, the voice of The Crone.
Leaving the elm behind, I asked, “Do I have to see my own soul?”
“Only if you want control over what pieces of it you share.”
I stopped about ten feet away from Her. She was armed, after all. I hoped She didn’t actually take part in this ritual and cut away pieces of souls with that scythe. It didn’t look very precise. Or sanitary. “What’s the risk if I don’t?”
She shrugged Her bent shoulders. “You may have your choice or your desire.”
Choice or desire? Sounded redundant, as if they should be the same thing, but I knew they were not. If asked to make a choice, people had to consider the possibilities. If given their desire, it might reflect a base, instinctual need without conscious thought attached to that selection.
I respected Johnny’s concern not to have us in his head. That encouraged me to pick choice, so he could decide what he shared.
If Menessos had that same opportunity to choose what to share and what not . . . it could be far more dangerous. And yet, letting his desire take some piece of my soul didn’t sound like the best option, either.
The root question was: do I trust my mind and heart to decide what was best, or my subconscious?
“Now I know why Una didn’t want to do this,” I muttered.
“Why do you utter such?”
“One I would give his choice. The other . . . is hard to trust with either option.”
The old woman laughed. “Why do you trust Menessos less?”
“I didn’t say it was him.”
“You don’t have to.”
Fine. “He would know better than Johnny or me how to manipulate the situation to his gain.”
“Has his gain been so unkind to you?”
“No.”
“Then decide which gift you give him.”
Choice or desire. Both. “I will allow Johnny to take what he desires, but I will choose what Menessos receives.”
“So it will be done. Come, child, and kneel before me.”
Even though She had chosen me to be the Lustrata, getting that close to the armed Crone was unsettling. Still, I could not refuse. I walked forward and knelt before Her, naked except for the Lustrata’s mantle.
Instantly She was in motion, Her age-spotted and gnarled hands swirling the scythe in overhead arcs and wide sweeping motions. The blade whistled as it sliced the air; the wind of the motion stirred my hair. I didn’t flinch, but pondered Her face, hidden in the dark of Her hood. Her eyes, I remembered, were haunting.
Suddenly, Hecate cried out and the scythe point embedded in the ground before me, so the widest part of the blade was waist high. “Cast your eyes upon this blade!” She commanded. Her hood fluttered and fell back, exposing Her wrinkled face, loosening gray hair, and terrible eyes that had stared into the sun for eons. “Stare into the silver and see your own soul.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
I peered at the blade, but saw nothing. No reflection at all.
Where am I?
My hands rose to the blade, to be sure it was real, and that the angle was right. The surface was shiny enough . . .
The side of my finger skimmed along a fraction of the keen blade. Pain sliced as my skin split. I jerked away. A single glistening drop of too-red blood ran slowly down the razor edge. The shiny blade shimmered and there I was, appearing surprised in my reflection. Then my image faded like smoke.
What remained glowed softly, nearly invisible, a stereotypical ghost from the movies
. Yet my senses overloaded at the sight. My mind went strange, as if perception had become tactile. My skin could see. I observed all that was around me at once. What was my previous sense of vision now examined the surface of the blade as if with intangible fingers. Tentacles? No, more like arcs of electrical current, searching, feeling, discerning with energy. The blade felt like radio static.
For one perfect moment, my awareness was redefined as a gentle light that surrounded me, as heavy as a knight’s armor yet nebulous as a cloud. It permeated my skin and my aura. It pulsed with energy like a venous system filled with a lifetime of flowing memories rather than blood. All that made me the person I was, created this synthesis.
My soul!
The revelation was astounding, amazing, and so vivid that—
I blinked and it severed me from this place.
No! I’m not done—
I was free-falling, rushing back into myself with break-the-sound-barrier speed.
I wanted Menessos to have my first memory of the Goddess. So he would know why I was in that cornfield, why I was running. And so he would know the comfort and solace that found me and changed my life forever . . .
A piece of my soul was torn from me.
The ache that claimed me was deeper than the heartbreak of my mother abandoning me, sharper than the rejection suffered when Michael and I broke up, and more miserable than the still-fresh grief of Xerxadrea’s death. Sorrow engulfed me and I choked on uncontrollable sobs.
I wanted Johnny to have his desire.
Another piece ripped loose. As it left me, I forgot what it was.
I felt emptier than I ever had. This was complete misery and despair. This was utter depression. This was hopelessness so absolute that life was not worth living anymore—
And then, where the pieces were torn away, pieces were added like a soothing balm.
My emptiness was gone. My despair subsided. My hopelessness faded away.
As master of the vampire, I had chosen what he would get and what I would take. As equal of the Domn Lup, I allowed him to choose what to take, and what to give. And when it was done, I collapsed into their strong arms.
I awoke.
There were voices, but not close by. I was in the dark. Waiting, I listened.
“. . . they’ll come in from the lake,” Menessos said.
The lake. The tunnel. Hecate. I sat up. The voices continued:
“You could make use of the sand. His people go out, lie down, and cover up with tarps then sand. The last one makes sure the others aren’t obvious.”
“What if the fey are watching the beach tonight?”
“Of course they are. We are.”
“Is there any means of magically detecting them?” I recognized Johnny’s voice saying this.
“It would have to be done prior to the arrival of your people. By the time the waeres arrived the situation could change. The fey might be monitoring it for magic and that action might give them cause to inspect.”
I didn’t recognize all of the voices. But I knew both Menessos and Johnny were nearby. I identified the big iron-studded door across from me as the one to Menessos’s private chamber. That meant I was in Menessos’s bed.
Black silk. The cinnamon smell of him was all over the bed. Invigorated by it, warmed from the inside out, I breathed it deep again and again. Mine.
My mind flashed on a memory. Something new and unclear. A whisper of music—plucked strings, hollow drums, a flute—I’d never heard before; the murmur of a male voice, the soft laughter of a woman. I tried to hold on to that remembrance, to relive it and know—
The studded door swung farther open. “You’ve roused. Join us.” Menessos gestured to the room beyond.
The recollection was gone. I rose from the bed, put on my boots, and followed him into the front chamber where Johnny, Goliath, Seven, and Mark were gathered around the altar table where we’d performed the ritual. Johnny mimicked my smile of greeting. My mind flashed on another new memory—a howl of profound aloneness—and I tripped, but recovered, seeing Mark steadying Johnny.
“Are you two all right?” Seven asked.
“They are fine,” Menessos affirmed, taking my arm to escort me the rest of the way.
Seven wasn’t convinced. She asked me directly, “What did you do?”
She’d already made it clear she wanted me to honor Menessos more than Johnny. From what she’d told me it was easy to see she believed her mistake as Lustrata was not giving the vampire enough of herself. Perhaps telling her—in private—of the soul-sharing would reassure her.
“What do you mean?” I hoped that, despite my embarrassment-warmed cheeks, I conveyed innocence.
“We need to update Persephone on our strategizing,” Menessos redirected.
“Our plan is simple: kill the fire fairy and the earth fairy.” Mark pointed to the table, indicating a spot on a map spread out on it. “This is Headlands Dunes. We are relatively certain the fairies will come in from Lake Erie, as it is less offensive to their allergies than the land. When they appear, Menessos must call them to him, as if to guard a circle. They will be drawn to him and, from the lighthouse here, the waerewolf sniper—safely away from the magic—uses iron-tipped bullets to kill the earth fairy. Menessos kills the other himself.”
“And what do I do?” I was supposed to be right there with Menessos.
Mark said, “Stay out of the way.”
“Hold on,” I said to Menessos. “They are bound to you and it hurt you when I killed Cerebrosus, it hurt you when Aquula died. What will happen to you if the remaining two are killed at once?”
“It will hurt,” he said plainly.
I made an irritated face at him that Seven copied. “If the sniper takes out the earth fairy, will you be able to take the fire fairy? I think you’d better plan on me”— even as the words left my mouth, I was stunned to hear myself saying them—“taking her out. She might compromise you if, at a critical time, the sniper acts.”
The weight of the stares directed at me made my heart race.
“You’re right,” Menessos conceded.
“How will you combat the effect of these two deaths?” Seven asked him.
“Mountain volunteered to fight. His bulk will be hard to hide, so let’s plan to have him nearby, ready when I need to feed.”
Everyone nodded. I added, “Okay, but this whole battle is all about them stopping you from calling them ever again. I may be supposedly delivering you to them, but they will anticipate you might use your summoning power. They will be ready for that.”
“Yes, I expect they will be.”
The calm in his voice bothered me. “You’re betting your life on the ability of a sniper to take out a fairy before they can strike.”
“Kirk’s the shooter,” Johnny said. “You met him last night, bouncer out front of The Dirty Dog.”
“The Mr. Clean wannabe?”
“No, the Asian guy.”
“The wiry overactor?”
Johnny nodded happily. “Yeah, him. He’s ex-military. Expert marksman. He can make the shot.”
“Do you fully trust him not to shoot Menessos?”
Johnny’s positive demeanor faded and he crossed his arms defensively, but I thought it was a legitimate question. “I do. He will shoot as instructed.”
“How many waeres do you have?”
“Twenty.”
I was able to stop myself before I blurted, “That’s all?” and changed it to an even, “Okay.” Twenty waeres were about as formidable as fifty or so men, I reminded myself. I addressed Menessos next. “You’re the master of the fairies. There’s some compulsion in that bonding, right? Will you be able to strike them?”
“Servants bear something of a benevolent compulsion toward their masters—”
I snickered, but he continued on, unaffected.
“—more so than masters feel toward them. Consequently, it is much easier for a master to strike a servant.”
Good to know. I guess.
“How many Beholders will you bring, Menessos?”
“Forty-five. Fifteen will remain here as guardians.”
So we had less than seventy people to bring to this war. Kind of downgrades it to a battle, huh? With the war coming after, if we lose. Seventy people didn’t sound like much, but it was better than two. Technically Menessos and I were the only ones supposed to show up. “Any idea how many fairies will come?”
“I am guessing forty or fifty,” Menessos said, “but the fey royals may want to show off. Especially if they are anticipating that we are bowing to their demands. They will want many of their underlings to see it.”
He had the most experience with the fey, so no one argued with his assumption. I certainly wouldn’t. “I can’t believe we might pin the hopes of this whole thing on one guy with a rifle. Is there a backup plan?”
“That’s where the waerewolves and Beholders come in.” Mark squared his shoulders. “The light infantry will be hidden in the switchgrass, and, hopefully, avoiding the cocklebur. They will wait for the signal and then storm the beach.”
Light infantry? I waited. “And?”
“And fight.”
“I’m no grand strategist, but isn’t that sparse on the planning? Fight with what? In formations or something? Or is this just a bar brawl?”
The men reacted with amusement, as if the silly waitress had just asked if they’d mind having another round of beer and wings for free.
“Have you ever seen waerewolves in an all-out bar brawl?” Johnny asked.
“No.”
“We don’t need formations and we don’t need weapons, we use what’s at hand.”
“There won’t be barstools and beer bottles on the beach. And even it there were, you need iron not broken glass. You’re fighting fairies who can change their size and fly. And, they’re magic. You’re bringing waerewolves.”
That reminder sobered him.
Goliath had taken up pacing on the far side of the room. He was listening, but not participating. He would be dead while all this happened. His master was heading into danger and, for all his expertise as an assassin, he’d be missing it.
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